Sheik Mansour

Did anybody see the Panorama programme on Barclays Bank's shady investment dealings last night?
It seems when Barclays were in trouble they refused to ask for a government bail out like other banks, they were probably afraid of what might be discovered if anybody looked at their dealings too closely. Apparently, one arm of the bank was involved solely in providing Tax Evasion facilities for companies and made billions out of it between 1998 and 2008.
So they looked elsewhere for a bail out, Colonel Gadaffi was supposed to be interested but that fell through when Libya imploded so in stepped Sheik Mansour.
The Sheik allegedly bought a huge amount of the bank's shares via 2 other companies registered off shore but it seems they were Abu Dhabi based companies acting as a front for the Sheik's share purchase and he became the biggest single share holder in Barclays.
The problem is that the way the deal was done, I'm not sure I understand it all, may have been illegal under international and UK law.
My worry is that if the Sheik becomes embroiled in a fraud case with the British government or he feels that his name is being tarnished here he may end up pulling his cash out of City.

I think the problem is supposed to be about the way Barclays informed their stakeholders of the change of source of funding. It was still the Sheikh's money but from a different vehicle.

At the time most financial market observers where well aware that the bank had been bailed out by Abu Dhabi money.

They were definitely implying in the programme that the way the deal was done was shady if not downright illegal.

Maybe so, but on the part of Barclays, not Mansour. He made enough on Barclays to buy City, buy all those players and STILL have a billion left over